28 Days Later (2002)

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Brendan Gleeson

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, no.

Did I Like It: One has to wonder precisely why I have missed the film over twenty years later. The likeliest suspect on spec is my general aversion to the zombie genre. I’m fine with misery porn when its based on reality—presumably we’ve surpassed or are trying to surpass the ills that introduced said misery—but when its all hypothetical, my threshold is pretty low.

My antipathy isn’t helped much by my skepticism that Boyle* has spent years insisting that the film isn’t really about zombies. How many directors of zombie films—from Romero to Edgar Wright—have insisted that their opus isn’t really about zombies? More importantly: How many of them are right or even remotely believable in that assertion?

So, I’m happy to report that Boyle was right on the money** and joins the elite minority of those  who actually know what their film is about. The film is incidentally about zombies and more about how the institutions we’re supposed to rely on are bureaucratically and temperamentally unable to meet the needs of the future. Jim (Murphy) awakens in a hospital, but there is no care there. He immediately heads for a church, but there is nothing but frightening realization there. He eventually bands together with some fellow survivors and try to find a base of military officers who offer protection, and possibly, answers.

Answers are scarce, and whatever protection they have in mind is a parody of the concept they would want us to believe in.

If you can get over the pronounced British video quality of the cinematography—it is often distracting, and puts one in mind to watch some BBC sitcom of the era—then the film offers plenty to chew on, and even a little bit of hope by the time the credits roll. The Walking Dead couldn’t even manage that much and they’re still trying to bring that thing to a conclusion fifteen years later.

*Not that one. Har har har.

**Har har har.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Director: Alan Taylor

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston

Have I Seen it Before: Tragically, it has been the most recent film I’ve seen at the drive-in. It is also the MCU movie I have probably re-watched the least.

Did I Like It: And there’s probably a reason that I haven’t watched it all that much.

I’ve always known this movie was at or near the bottom of many and my own personal rankings of the Marvel movies. I think it hits me in the opening few seconds. It’s not a moment like Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987) where something is truly, deeply wrong with the film and there is no chance of improvement. It is more banal than that. Odin (Anthony Hopkins) opens with a sweeping narration about what the Dark Elves are and why Malekith (Eccleston) has a beef with the Asgardians. Now, if you must open your big visual blockbuster with a VO—and I’m not entirely convinced this one does—you could do a lot worse than Hopkins. But, man, do I already want a nap after all that. The film is packed with this warmed-over fantasy banality that the film can never quite come together fully for me.

It is not completely without it’s charms. The pleasing qualities of the first Thor (2011) and what would become the bonkers fun of its successor Thor: Ragnarok (2017) are here, they’re just in highly rationed amounts. The tragically underused Heimdall (Idris Elba) gets a goodly action sequence or two to call his own, whereas he is appears content to just glower and watch for the rest of the series. The score—by MCU score secret weapon Brian Tyler—is actually one of the best of the whole series. Chris Evans’ cameo is quite a bit of fun.

It isn’t a bad movie, really and truly it is a testament to the MCU that they haven’t made an objectively (your mileage may vary) bad film. Nearly every other much shorter film series has a stinker. It’s just so pointedly obvious that everyone involved here—except for perhaps journeyman filmmaker Alan Taylor—is capable of so much more.

Now, that all having been said, if this review makes you put this film in the “non-essential” category, I don’t know if I would go that far, either. Missing The Dark World will make a large portion of the middle hour of Avengers: Endgame (and some truly enchanting expositioning from the freely wacky Thor) largely incomprehensible, and would rob that far more amvbitious film of some decent emotional beats. If that isn’t a recommendation (if a slightly damning one), then I don’t know what is.